Businesses are growing increasingly dependent on networked applications. These applications are deployed across intranet, extranet and Internet connections to effect essential communications with workers, business partners and customers. As the number of users, applications and external traffic increases, however, network congestion forms and impairs business application performance. Moreover, as business enterprises become more dependent on the Internet and more sensitive to network congestion, the amount of network traffic from unsanctioned activities, like casual web browsing and on-line shopping, is growing dramatically, exacerbating network congestion problems. Enterprise network managers, therefore, are challenged with determining the volume, origin and nature of network traffic to align network resources with business priorities and applications.
Today, providers of network services have recognized that many business customers have limited capital and human resources to respond to changing business network requirements. In response, they have developed a portfolio of value-added managed network services (MNS) that allow their customers to out-source key design, deployment and management functions of intranet, extranet and Internet connectivity. Although these services provide managed connectivity for businesses, they are abstracted from and ignorant of the network traffic that flows across the service. When a customer experiences an application performance problem, it is difficult to determine whether the problem is induced by the MNS service or the customer's own computing and network infrastructure.
This lack of visibility and control of application performance over the MNS causes the service provider to spend resources to engage and pinpoint the problem. This often requires the service provider to send skilled personnel with diagnostic equipment to the customer's site to determine if the problem emanates from the provider's or the customer's network environment.
Currently, business customers suffering from network congestion and poor business application performance respond with several alternative solutions. The primary method of responding to poor business application performance is to increase network bandwidth. To many business, however, this approach is cost prohibitive due to the high recurring costs of bandwidth. Moreover, adding incremental bandwidth often fails because of certain forms of network traffic-usually bursty, less critical or non-sanctioned traffic-that aggressively consume the added bandwidth and leave more well-behaved business applications with little to no performance improvement.
A second approach is to manage network traffic and application performance by employing bandwidth management functionality using existing network infrastructure equipment (e.g., routers), if possible, or by deploying new bandwidth management-specific equipment. This requires the business to make substantial capital and operational investment in order to implement, manage and maintain bandwidth management technology internally. For example, to ensure the performance of their critical business applications and to control bandwidth resources, some businesses deploy bandwidth management platforms at the edge of their intranet, extranet and Internet connections. This involves installation of bandwidth management hardware followed by a process of discovering what traffic is on the network; analyzing the traffic to determine utilization and relative impact on business application performance; implementing control policies to effect the desired performance outcome; and, then setting thresholds to alert network managers to any performance degradations. For many business, however, the capital and human resource cost of deploying and managing a bandwidth management solution internally is too great.
In light of the foregoing, a need exists for methods, apparatuses and systems that allow a network service provider to offer application performance management services as an out-sourced service. At present, however, the two closest alternatives available to network service providers fall short of the capabilities necessary to support an application performance management service.
WAN Service-Level Management Services: Service providers offering wide-area network service-level management solutions do have the ability to monitor traffic flowing across its customers intranet, extranet and Internet connections. However, their monitoring abilities are limited to the different types of network protocols and do not provide adequate visibility into the type, nature, and origin of business applications and traffic from sanctioned and non-sanctioned activities. Moreover, WAN Service-Level Management solutions are completely passive and offer no means of network traffic control rendering the service incapable of resolving traffic congestion and application performance problems.
Managed Network Services (MNS): Business customers who choose to out-source their entire WAN infrastructure often deploy MNS offerings. MNS provides all of the necessary network connectivity and management infrastructure needed to connect remote business offices together, including WAN circuits, routers and on-going management services. These services, however, are connectivity-driven and are not intended to align directly with application productivity needs. Therefore, they lack the necessary bandwidth management technology for peering deep into network traffic to isolate and control the stream of application traffic with differing business priorities. MNS services also lack the policy-based management and accompanying infrastructure to mass provision and manage business customer applications as an out-sourced function.